I would love to. This would be great for our members however I see one problem.

How and when are the updated? Several of the articles I read were very good at the time they were written. But now the information is dated and are either misleading or flat out wrong. Who will be updating the articles and how often? How will we be notified of updates to the article?

The web is full of dated obsolete information, just look at Microsoft’s Tech web site. If the article are not updated and there is no way to dynamically update the articles on our site aren’t we just polluting the web? If the info is updated and dynamic links can be created to refresh our content this is great!

I have seen some articles with a Gnu License. Gnu Licenses were, as I understand it, originally meant for sharing software but have since broadened.So I wonder if Gnu and Creative Commons are trying to do the same thing. Is anyone familiar with both who could compare and contrast them?

We're not using a a derivatives-allowed license for now because many of our articles are either written by freelancers who have concerns about their work being modified, or funded by grants where similar concerns come into play.

I do want to point out, however, that TechSoup does not have a single, site-wide Creative Commons license. Rather, we can apply a specific CC license to a specific article. So some articles may indeed by released under a derivatives-allowed license.

As we get the word out and more people grow comfortable with Creative Commons licensing, I'm sure we'll start releasing more articles under a derivatives-allowed license. Just keep your eye out for them!

We took a look at the GPL (GNU Public License) option when we were considering what sort of licensing policy to adopt for TechSoup. Though GPL does have a specific license for documentation -- called the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) -- we found Creative Commons licensing to be much more versatile.

For instance, GFDL only applies to text-based works, whereas there are Creative Commons licenses for images, audio, video, and so on.

Additionally, GFDL allows anyone to reprint and modify your work, whereas you have more options to choose from with Creative Commons licensing, depending on how "open" you want your content to be.

Finally, Creative Commons is more widely used for creative works than GFDL is. And it seems like the trend toward using Creative Commons will continue.